


Collateral Damage

by quenchycactus



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Forced Separation, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 11:04:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5331860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quenchycactus/pseuds/quenchycactus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are kept on complete opposite sides of the BSHCI, under Alana’s watchful eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage

**Author's Note:**

> Finally getting back in to the writing swing of things! The semester is dying down finally, which means I'll be able to get back to _[Famiglia](http://archiveofourown.org/series/307275)_ within the next 2 weeks or so. The ending to that one has been sitting half finished on my computer for months.
> 
> For now, here's a thing I wrote instead of writing my lab report.
> 
> Post Season 3 finale, inspired by the beginning of [this post](http://moku-youbi.tumblr.com/post/129372839280/season-5-feels).
> 
> As always, a big thanks to [Felicia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/grkuvus) for editing.
> 
> Also posted on my [tumblr blog](http://quenchycactus.tumblr.com/post/134364039545/collateral-damage)!  
> 

They get caught about five years after the fact, in the Netherlands, and Freddie Lounds has a field day.  She works her way to mainstream, the source of all things “murder husbands”, and is currently raking in royalties every time any major news source drops the phrase.

Chilton’s probably seething.  The thought makes Will chuckle, though only slightly.

He watches the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane loom over him, and wonders if he and Hannibal could possibly squeeze out an insanity charge this time.

___________

They did not return his books, or his drawings, which is borderline unacceptable.  But Hannibal can live without them, albeit unhappily.

What is completely over the line, however, is that they would not return Will, either.  This, Hannibal can _not_ live with.

They are kept on complete opposite sides of the BSHCI, under Alana’s watchful eye.  She and Margot had returned specifically for their capture and continued supervision, and while Hannibal admires her conviction, always had, he does not admire her enforced separation.

He tells her as much, on day three of their incarceration.

“When I come for you, I’ll visit Margot first.  You will not see your wife or children before I take them from you.”

Alana’s face twitches minimally; her composure barely falters, but Hannibal sees the anger, and under that, the fear, and is somewhat satisfied.  She covers it all with a vague unimpressed air, and raises an eyebrow.

“He’s not your husband, Hannibal, despite what Freddie calls you.  I don’t have to grant you conjugal visits, and I won’t.”

“You will.”

She turns to leave.  Hannibal walks back a few paces and sits on his dingy bunk, a cell like everyone else’s.

“Give Will my love,” He calls after her, because she’ll visit him next.  She always does.

___________

“He sends you his love.”

It’s the third week they’re here, and Alana has the same odd look on her face as the first time she said this – something like curiosity and disgust and bemusement.

“You know, you wouldn’t have to keep relaying these messages if you just let us see each other.”

Will keeps his voice matter-of-fact, calm and reasonable.  If he’s being honest, though, he wants to tear his hair out.  It’s a bit of an adjustment, going from seeing someone just about every single day for the past five years to not seeing them at all.  Will’s not sure he’s ever going to really adjust either.  The last time he was separated from Hannibal, Will had bought a boat and sailed across the Atlantic to find him.  He’d said back then they were essentially one person, and that was nothing compared to how entwined they are now.

He’s not as good with keeping his composure as Hannibal.  A few more weeks of this and Will is sure he’ll go positively feral.

“You understand why I’m not letting that happen, don’t you?”

Will remains silent, stares hard at Alana until she sighs, refusing to be disturbed by his expression.

“Individually you are destructive enough, but together you two have caused more havoc than I care to think about.  First it was to each other.  Then it was to each other, and the people around you.  Now, it’s everyone else you can get your hands on.  I’m not about to let that happen again.  I’m not Jack.”

Will chuckles at Jack’s name.  To this day he is still not sure how on earth he got away with half the things he’d done, how Jack didn’t see any of this coming.

Granted, Will isn’t sure he saw this coming either, but from an outside perspective it was pretty obvious the direction he’d been heading.

He shakes his head.  “No, you’re not Jack.  Which is why I know you’ll be smart about this.  You’ll let us see each other, I know you will.”

Alana wants to throw her arms in the air, Will can see it, but she instead purses her lips, readies to leave.

“Is there anything you want me to tell him?”  She asks in an annoyed, droning monotone.

Will thinks for a moment, smiles to himself. “Tell him: ‘when I see you, I hope you have blood dripping from your teeth.  It’ll be like the cliff side.  It’ll be beautiful.’”

Alana balks.

____________

Three months into their incarceration and Hannibal tries to amuse himself by being extremely uncooperative, in the most subtle ways he can.  It works, marginally.

He looks at Alana like he wants to rip out her organs with his teeth, because he does.

He watches her throat move when she talks and imagines tearing chunks of flesh.  Physically she is soft, and will break easily.

Hannibal lightly taps his knuckles on the cell bars.  “How are your children, Alana?  You had another while I was away?  A boy?”

Alana squints at him.  “Yes.  They’re fine. Now back to the subject at hand-”

“Is he also a Verger?”

The question carries a very specific implication.  He’s trying to get a rise out of her, and she knows it, and refuses to play along.  It’s almost a game between them now – Hannibal creating fissures in her strong exterior and Alana trying not to let them propagate.  Will plays this game too, he can tell.

She’s losing her patience.

Though, not losing it quite fast enough to give them what they want.

For the next 10 minutes, Alana continues like she never heard him interrupt her, and he continues in the same manner.  They get nowhere, and soon she stands up and leaves.

Hannibal gives her a message, like always, and knows she will relay it.  She’s too curious not to.

_____________

“I understand why you want to see him,” Alana says, 6 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, and 11 hours after Will and Hannibal were separated.  Not that he’s counting.

Will looks up at her.  It’s the first time she’s really acknowledged that.  He’s known from the beginning she understands, or at least marginally does.  Anyone with a spouse – hell, anyone with a brain and basic social skills – can somewhat relate.  No one really comes close to what he and Hannibal have, but the base is there.  The most banal form of it.  It’s not exactly hard to get.

“But you won’t let me.”  It’s not a question.

“No.”

“A bit cruel, don’t you think?”

She raises an eyebrow, incensed.  She laughs, or mimics laughter.  There’s no humor behind it.  “Cruel was what you did to the first round of officers and agents that tried to catch you.  Most of them were married too.  A lot of them had children.”

Will mirrors her expression.  Objectively, yes, it was cruel, and grotesque, but he is cruel and grotesque, so the action fits.  Beyond that it was art, was a vow to protect, an expression of love and devotion, but no one sees that.  No one sees the beauty of it but Hannibal.

“You’d do anything to protect Margot.  I know you would.  You already have.  I just didn’t feel the need to hide my actions like you did.”

Alana opens her mouth to speak, angry, but doesn’t say anything, and Will steamrolls on.  He’s found a chink in her armor, made her react.

“What I did was no different than what you did.  Just bigger.  You understand why I want to see him.  That means you understand why I would want to protect him too, in any way I know how.”

She remains silent.

“Those agents got a quick death.  I didn’t have time for something as fancy as what I really wanted to do with them.  They were lucky, in a way.”

Will sees her eyes flash, flooding with emotions she’s held back from him, and he smiles, wicked.  She’s enraged, but beyond that she’s sad.  Grieving for the man she thought he was, and for all the blood on his hands and hers.  Fear works its way through the rushing stream, and Will knows he’s won this round.

Slowly but surely he’ll win them all.  And then he’ll get what he wants.

“Tell him I miss making valentines together.”

Alana gives no answer as she leaves him, and Will calls after her, throwing one more jab at her back.

“What are you going to give Margot for Valentine’s?”

___________

It’s nearing 9 months now, and Hannibal has killed Alana a thousand times over in his head.  He’s killed her family a thousand times more.

“Please tell Will: ‘I think of your last gift to me often, my dear.  Shortly I will give one to you.  I apologize for the wait.’”

The threat is obvious, and he knows Alana will be smart about it.  She won’t prematurely anticipate a plan and move him somewhere more secure, because that will give him his chance.  She knows he has nothing up his sleeve at the moment but words, and she’ll do her best to ignore them.

But words are enough, for now.  They will make her think, make her worry.  Make her wonder if there is a plan after all.

She’s losing.  Slowly but surely.

He will see Will again, and much faster than Alana plans.  He must.  If he is being truthful, the Will that exists in his memory palace vastly pales in comparison to the real thing, and Hannibal is starving for him.  He can’t survive on such meagerness forever.  If he never sees Will again, Hannibal fears he will truly go mad.

He realized years ago how much Will’s physical presence was necessary, and it’d been uncomfortable at first.  Inconvenient.   He’d never experienced such a raw hunger, a need for another person as he has for Will.  But Hannibal had accepted the feeling, had given himself to it once Will reciprocated it in full.  They’d reveled in it, together.

Will truly sees him, and he sees Will.  No two beings have or ever will be as connected as they are to each other, and it’s addictive, dizzying and wonderful.

To rip this from him, from Will, is unforgivable.

__________

368 – A year and three days.  Will is honestly not sure how he’s lasted this long.  The messages help.

He leans against the side of his metal cage.  They don’t let them out here that much, either of them.  Alana keeps them to their cells as much as is legal.  She’s smart to.

“He didn’t kill you because I asked him not to.”

She starts slightly.  Will smiles.  He caught her off guard.

“You used to think Hannibal pulled all the strings but we pull each other’s, now.  I asked him to leave you and Margot alone, and he did.  You didn’t deserve to die.  Margot doesn’t either.”

Alana catches the switching tenses easily.  One of her cracks elongates.

Will smiles wider, directs it at her.  It’s sweet and happy, which makes it that much more unsettling.

“I’m not sure I care what happens to you anymore.  Margot and your kids, they don’t deserve anything, but I’m not sure I could stop Hannibal after all of this.”

“You both act like you’re somehow going to leave here.”  Her tone is authoritative, mocking.  She’s defensive.

“We probably won’t, you’re right.  We’re even lucky we scraped together an insanity plea that worked.  But it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Will shoulders off the corner and leans through the metal bars of the cage, looking at her through his hair – longer now, like the last time he was here.

“We don’t need to be out in the world to have agency in it.  You know what we’re capable of.  How many admirers have you had to deal with already?  At least three, from the little bit of news I’m allowed to see.”

Alana says nothing, but the grip on her pen tightens.

“He’ll find a way to get to them, Alana.  I promise you that.  He found a way to get to mine.”

She stand more abruptly than she means, and Will’s face splits into a sickening grin.  He shouts his message to her as she leaves, heels clicking fast on the tile.

_____________

No more than three hours later, alarms blare on both sides of the hospital.  Hannibal smiles, mouth bloody, up at the camera and pictures Alana’s face paling.  She’s probably shouting, too.

He’d been patient, Hannibal.  He hadn’t been given much of a chance to do anything besides sling threats in Alana’s direction, but an orderly slipped up, as he’d been sure one eventually would.

The orderly had dropped a small key, and it had fallen, unnoticed, near Hannibal’s cell.  The little tinkling noise it made rang around the hallways but did not touch the orderly’s ears, because he’d been wearing headphones.  They weren’t even supposed to have those.

Hannibal rips the key across yet another orderly’s neck, drops the body by the others.

As of now they total 5: 3 orderlies and 2 prison guards, with various stab wounds, gashes, and chunks of flesh missing.

Hannibal drives the key into the temple of a still-twitching body, shoulders heaving with heavy breath and a feral look in his eye.  He’d missed the feeling of hot blood on him, the rapturous power ending a life instills him with.  He faces the several guards running down the hallway, and makes no move to kill them.

He’s finished, for now.  He’s made his point.  They taze him unconscious, and as he blacks out Hannibal finally registers the meaning behind the twin alarms, and warmth blossoms in his chest.

Will is painting a picture of his own.

___________

Will hears the second alarm and breathes deep, imagines Hannibal soaked in blood and the sight twists a laugh out of him, as he strangles a guard and snaps his neck.  He takes the handcuffs from his belt and drives the ends like hooks into the eyes of an orderly, pierces the jugular of another with a set of keys , and manages to reach one more orderly before he feels a shock course through his body.

He doesn’t manage to kill her, but he knows the gash down her chest will leave a deep scar.

Will laughs again, as his vision fades.

__________

It happens again, and again, and once more, over the months.  Never quite the massacre as that first time, usually only ending in injuries.  Several members of the hospital staff are missing bits of flesh, though, and Hannibal hums happily in his cell at the thought.

The universe keeps giving them chances, and he and Will keep taking them, at almost the same time, and in almost the same manner.

The hospital is in thinly veiled chaos, and Alana looks positively frayed.  In the past few weeks or so, both of them have taken up the habit of talking to the other inmates, to see what they will do.  And they do quite a lot.

There’s a general unrest simmering.  Other patients have begun lashing out, some have even committed suicide.  They’re easy prey, and they succumb quickly.

Alana seethes in front of him, but underneath her rage, she is frightened.

“If you were wise, you’d let me see Will.”

She stands behind the back of her chair, rests her hands on it and taps her foot, thinking.

“Tick, tock Alana.  Are you sure I don’t have anyone else in my pocket?  Anyone on the outside?”

She hangs her head briefly, snapping it up with ice in her eyes.

“You may see him.”

She leaves before Hannibal can pass on a message.

____________

“I told you over a year ago, Alana.  I told you you’d lose.  I’ve told you a lot of things over the years that ended up being right, but you never listened.”

Her voice is tight when she speaks.  “You get one hour.”

Will shifts on the seat in the cage.  “Oh, you know that’s not enough Alana.”  His voice is lightly chastising, teasing almost.

“At this point you might as well give us adjoining cells.  Might save the hospital from falling apart.”  Will cocks his head to the side and smirks, infuriatingly smug.  Alana says nothing, tries to keep her face expressionless.

“You didn’t even let him give me a message.  I’m sure he finds that _extremely_ rude.”

Will slips a dismantled pen out of his sleeve, flips it in the air and twirls it between his fingers.

“You know, you really should hire better orderlies.  They drop things _all the time_.”  He knows Alana is picturing the young man currently in the medical wing of the hospital with a broken hand.  They hadn’t been able to find what Will had taken, and the orderly wouldn’t say.  Probably because pens weren’t allowed around the inmates.  There’s a lot you can do with a pen.

Alana instinctively steps back and her arm shoots out, signaling for a guard.  She leaves as Will stabs the pen into the inside of the guard's wrist, chuckling as she frantically calls for the nurse.

___________

They bring Hannibal to his new cell in the highest amount of restraints they can reasonably fit on one person.

It doesn’t matter.  He has what he wants now.

It has been 1 year and 6 months since he has last seen Will, and Hannibal breathes deep as they wheel him along.  A peace is settling over him, and his stomach feels light and fluttering.  Relief more potent than he’s ever known roars in his ears like the sea.

Will is waiting at the bars, and he looks radiant, a large grin on his face stretching the scar on his cheek.  They stare at each other and Will laughs, a bright, almost incredulous sound, and reaches for him.

They haven’t touched in a year and a half either.

The surrounding guards are smart enough not to try and stop him.  Will’s fingers just brush the fabric of Hannibal’s straight jacket, trying to cling.  He hooks a finger in one of the folds and they sigh, connected and content.  Hannibal feels his lungs stutter with emotion.  Will leans his face against the bars and closes his eyes, drunk on the contact.

They open Hannibal’s cell door and Will’s hand falls from his arm much too soon.  But then the restraints are gone and so are the guards, and they’re alone.  And they’re together.  Hannibal places a hand on their adjoining wall.

“Hello, Will.”

Will laughs again, loud and clear and euphoric.


End file.
